Sugar Added, Fairies Optional

By MELISSA CLARK

Published: March 13, 2013

I’ve had real Irish soda bread, and I’ve had ersatz Irish soda bread. Despite my usual preference for foodstuffs rooted in authenticity, in this case I like the fake version better. Real Irish soda bread, any cook from Ireland will tell you, is a minimalist loaf that is not sullied by raisins, sugar or eggs. Whether made from white flour or whole wheat, it’s got a dense texture, a soft crumb and a gentle flavor subtly imbued with the leavening agent of its name, baking soda. The recipe is basic and simple to make, and the bread is best eaten still steaming from the oven, slathered with good salted Irish butter that melts on contact with your slice. It’s a fine, fast loaf. But, after trying one recipe a few years ago, I’ll probably never bake it again. Instead, whenever I want Irish soda bread I turn to the more elaborate Irish-American version, a sweet, rich confection studded with raisins or currants, and sometimes scented with caraway. That’s the bread I grew up eating in Brooklyn, and it’s what I yearn for come St. Patrick’s Day. Then, I’ll eat as much of the moist loaf as I can on the day it was baked, and continue to nibble away on toasted slices until the last crumbs have been pressed onto my fingers and licked right off. Pretty much the only traditional thing about my Irish soda bread recipe, other than the use of baking soda itself, is that I mark the top with a cross before baking. This may be done in Ireland for religious reasons, as an Irish baker once told me. Or, perhaps it is done, wrote the noted Irish cookbook author Darina Allen, “to let the fairies out.” You see, any fairies still caught in the loaf will put a hex on it. In this new incarnation of my soda bread recipe, I kept the crosses, but to maximize the surface area of the crumbly, crunchy outer crust, I baked the dough into small buns instead of a large loaf. That way, I was able to get more of the bumpy-textured crust in each bite. And, as an added bonus, the buns that I didn’t eat on the first day were easy to throw into the freezer and then pull out to defrost one at a time. Now I do this whenever my morning cup of Irish Breakfast tea cries out for company.